Biomass production is broadly distributed throughout the United States, and there is an economic impasse to shipping tons of agricultural and forest products to a few large refineries. Additionally, biomass consists of a heterogeneous mix of forest and agricultural products that varies significantly in molecular makeup. Both of these challenges demand that the technology for biofuels production must be scalable and versatile.
The practical exploitation of biomass as a carbon-neutral source of fuels may require the development of small distributed production systems capable of processing solids and chemical conversion technologies that can overcome the recalcitrance of lignocellulosic biomass. While several processes for biomass utilization have been proposed, none meets the productivity, scalability, product distribution and economics for commercial implementation.